Phantoms of Honor
by Heir of the void
Summary: The Effigy Project - A classified weapons development program, ostensibly established for the purpose of creating weapons to fight the Nova independent of Chevalier control. Its result: a powerful macrosuit capable of fighting the Nova on equal terms. But as shadows gather and sharks circle, this machine and the intelligence of its creators may not be enough to turn the tide.


**North-West Wyoming, 2057 A.D.**

Brigadier General Charles Graff sat at his desk more than a mile underground, waiting for the phone to ring. Events had proceeded in a manner that was, if not exactly as planned, far more than satisfactory.

The office was typical, displaying the style popular among high circles; clear but restrained displays of wealth. The only truly unusual thing about the room was the picture window of inch-thick transparent ballistic sapphire that occupied most of the wall opposite the desk.

The somewhat ornate antique-style phone began to ring. Graff smiled and picked it up.

There was, of course, no phone. There was a visual illusion of a mostly-opaque phone projected into his field of view, and he received haptic tactile sensations when he touched it, but all that was a creation of his piloting implant array, one of only a handful of such functional systems in the world.

It was, of course, a completely frivolous use of a billion-plus dollar prototype, but it no real impact on the handful of useful things he did with the implants, and he figured that a man of his station and accomplishment was entitled to a few eccentricities.

"Marius actual." Graff said, speaking into the air.

"We have the candidates in hand." The woman at the other end of the phone said, fatigue evident in her voice. "Both are in serious condition."

"Send me the reports." Graff responded, the relevant information appearing in his field of view before he finished speaking.

He was far from a practicing doctor, but he had learned enough in field medicine to know that neither of the twin candidates were in good shape.

Still, it was almost immediately obvious that the girl's condition was much worse than her brother's. The decision was obvious. He took a deep breath.

"Salvage the girl. Sedate the boy and bring him here." Graff said, wondering if he would have made the same decision had the conditions been reversed. "When he wakes up, tell him that his sister passed away while he was asleep. Its accurate enough, and it might even turn out to be true."

"Very well, sir." There was a short pause. "Do you think we're doing the right thing, sir? I understand the stakes and the circumstances, but..."

Graff closed his eyes. "I ask myself the same thing every day, and I stay my course. I account my sins, and as numerous as they are, I believe the crime of inaction inaction would be greater still. Besides, I know the sunk cost fallacy, but if we give up now..."

"I understand, sir."

"Very good." Graff said, standing up and walking toward the glass wall. "But we all have miles to go until we can sleep, so if you could excuse me..."

"Yes, sir."

The line went dead. Graff held the handset face down and opened his hand, the illusionary phone fading entirely before it fell more than a few inches.

Graff raised a hand and rested his fingertips on surface of the glass, looking up at the colossal and incomplete skeleton mounted on the opposite wall.

There was work to be done.

[x]

 **Phantoms of Honor**

 **Part Aleph - Dusk of a Forsaken World**

 **Chapter-01: Illuminating Storms**

 **Five Years Later, 50 kilometers above the south-western Bering Sea**

Nathaniel Jefferson Oberon checked the last seal on his pilot suit as he secured his glove, then flexed his hand and clenched his fist. The Seal was good, and he had full freedom of movement. He began the automated final diagnostic and then, picking up his flight helmet from its rack and tucking it under his arm, he closed the locker and began walking out of the narrow ready room.

The young man was of above average height, his somewhat lithe frame augmented by years of military training and now covered from neck to toe in his pilot suit, an articulated ensemble of precision-molded semirigid plates overlaying a web of neural connectors and biometric monitors containing a layer of engineered homeostatic impact gel.

He had plain, raven-black hair close-cropped in a regulation buzz cut that stood in contrast to his uncommonly pale skin. The combination seemed to complement his deep, somber green eyes, though he could never quite grasp exactly how that worked. The whole physiognomic ensemble was set on a planar face that closely fit the classical masculine ideal, though it carried too much of a sense of weight and starkness to be considered truly attractive.

Taking a deep breath, Nathaniel pushed open the door to the ready room and stepped out onto the innocuously named Outbound Flights Gate.

A brown-haired woman even taller than he was turned toward him, fixing her bright blue eyes on him. She was Odessa Thomas, Personnel Oversight Officer of the Effigy Project. Outside the normal chain of command and of an undisclosed rank, Nathaniel generally feared her more than the Nova.

"Captain Oberon." She said, turning toward the back wall of the room and the waiting chair. "We have dropped to hypersonic speeds and are now well within three thousand kilometers of the target area. Are you prepared to board for deployment?"

"Yes, ma'am." Nathan said.

"Excellent." Odessa said. "Intelligence on the ground is spotty, and we're still running a prototype, so exercise caution. Pilot, prepare to board."

Nathaniel walked over to the chair and sat down, placing his feet on the provided outlines and his helmet on the designated rack. Several hatches opened in the floor around them, and mechanized armatures began lifting the components of the leg sections of the KX-03 Feedback Protector Control Exoskeleton into place over his flight suit.

The Feedback Protector was the system which translated his neural interface system's output into useful controls, and provided him with a buffer against neural backlash to prevent damage.

It also was really good for hitting things, but given its massive cost and current near-unique status, that was 'strongly discouraged'.

The three lower leg sections locked together and sealed, and the assembly armatures began working their way up Nathaniel's body, covering his suit in heavy metal. He held out his arms as the upper backplate was secured, and the hand and the arming machine began to attach the arm sections and hand sections of the KX-03.

The thorax braces were locked on, and Nathaniel took a deep breath as his helmet was lowered over his head. He felt a moment of claustrophobia as it locked onto his neck ports, then sighed in relief as the optical display and interface came online and the helmet seemed to vanish from his perception.

He set his arms onto the armrests. Restraints snapped into place, then the seat began to tilt backwards.

It was fully horizontal within seconds, and then began to rotate so Nathaniel's feet were facing the wall. For a moment, everything was as still as it could be while moving at Mach 7.5.

"Good luck out there." Odessa said softly.

Then the back wall of the Outbound Flights Gate irised open, revealing a massive dimly lit space, the smooth contours of something on a massive scale fairly visible beyond the wall. Nathaniel's chair began sliding forward into the darkness, the wall closing behind him.

Nathaniel passed into a tunnel of pitch black, and heard an armored hatch seal behind him. The chair disassembled itself underneath Nathaniel, gently setting him down on another surface.

Locking bolts secured him in place, and then there was a moment of quiet.

A point of light appeared in the center of Nathaniel's vision, then grew to fill his sight, unfolding into a startup status display.

"Commence shift to operational mode." Nathaniel commanded, using an instantaneous method of communication somewhere between speech and thought. "Begin reactor startup."

A low rumble filled the cockpit, quickly fading as it rose in frequency.

"Reactor online at standby status." A soft voice responded. "All variables nominal."

"Begin Mechanized Stigmata activation sequence." Nathaniel responded.

"Yes, master." The voice of the machine said.

The sixteen boxes along the bottom of Nathaniel's readout, each representing one array of Mechanized Stigmata, began to fill with color. Within seconds, they began to flash green in one after another.

"Activation complete."

"Start Impeller and Shift Field precharging, then tension array and servo prep. Then begin pre-launch sequence."

"Understood." The voice said, as status indicators began flickering across Nathaniel's view.

He sat in the darkness for an indeterminate period of time, then the preflight checks were complete.

"Entering launch window."

"Final combat release." Nathaniel said. "We were born for flight."

"Before the light of dawn." The voice responded.

There was a jolt, and Nathaniel was falling. He began to feel a roll, but then he was overtaken by a sudden rush of vertigo, and abruptly he was sitting upright, 'down' firmly toward his feet.

His display panels came alive, inch-long square sections illuminating in an uneven ripple across from forward to backward and revealing a breathtaking panorama of the outside world.

He was dozens of kilometers above the ocean, far above even the highest clouds. The distant horizon clearly displayed the curvature of the planet below, and he could just make out the distant speck that was the Hypersonic Suborbital Strategic Transport he had deployed from fading in the distance.

His machine could achieve impressive speeds in a straight sprint, and the several thousand miles between Japan and Wyoming weren't really a range problem.

But while his speed was merely impressive, an HSST was _stupidly_ fast. The 'hypersonic' was actually a misnomer; it spent most of its flight time in suborbital space going _far_ faster.

Nathaniel pushed his encased arms forward slightly, activating his main thrusters.

If anyone had managed to be standing close enough and moving at sufficient speed to see it happen, they would have seen a massive humanoid machine more than seventy-two feet tall standing at attention and plummeting towards the ocean suddenly begin to _shift_.

Explaining what comes next requires a few salient background facts.

The XTS-03 Archangel was the first fully operational Demonstration Type procured by the Effigy Project after more than a decade of labor investment at the highest level of secrecy. The project had not faced widespread public or institutional skepticism, as it was far too secret for anyone who might oppose it to know about. Nathaniel was yet to get a straight answer as to whether the currently serving President knew about it. Its budget came from a variety of sources, ranging from old-fashioned Black Budget allocations to uninformed reallocations of funds from other programs to a few hundred thousand nonexistent welfare recipients who made regular and generous donations to the program.

Designed to thrive in the fiercest zones of modern postindustrial transhuman combat, the XTS-03 Archangel was, from its conception, anachronistic.

The Archangel was an atavism of mind-numbing scale harkening back to the awesome tragedies of Antietam and Verdun and Stalingrad. It was an avatar of industrial conflict in a world that had turned its back on that art for a century. It was American war in an era of Byzantine politics, a panzer division in a realm of skirmishers, a B24 in a culture of duels, and a claymore in a contest of rapiers.

It was the savage pinnacle of a hundred centuries of civilization, possessing raw power in a world that valued finesse.

It was a less elegant weapon for a more barbaric age.

The theory of the XTS-03 was simple in its conception but arcane in its execution. Using an ultracompact Solar Furnace Reactor running at minimum output to pump energy through an array of Mechanized Plasma Stigmata, it generated a variant Plasma Texture that was used to reinforce the reactor and allow it to reach the full design output. That power was then channeled through the MPS array, and the output was used to project the Shift Field and drive the machine.

When operational, the Shift Field essentially placed the entire machine in a mixed quantum state where it existed both as conventional baryonic matter and as a massive Plasma Texture. That state, combined with bleeding-edge nanomaterials and permanent changes to its physical structure engendered by the use of Shift Field manufacturing techniques, allowed it to overcome the tyranny of the odious Square-Cube Law and act with otherworldly grace for something of its size.

However, the Shift Field could also be used for some other really cool party tricks.

For example, the aforementioned observer would see wireframe patterns of light grow from several locations on the falling Archangel, lasting for an instant before solid matter appeared over them like concrete poured around reinforcing steel. Within seconds, the new sections were indistinguishable from the rest of the machine, which and obtained a much more angular appearance, with a nose like a barbed arrow extending from above its head, several new thruster arrays, and stubby delta wings extending from its sides.

Then, massive flares of electric blue engine exhaust blasted out of several drive nozzles on the Archangel, the largest pair on its back, followed by a pair of pylon-mounted engines positions above the calf.

Nathaniel felt a slight pressure on his chest as his machine accelerated above one kilometer per second. He had lost a lot of speed to air resistance during his drop, and he had to make up for lost time.

Plotting a simple great-circle course to West Genetics with a small part of his mind, Nathaniel began hacking the Chevalier combat networks with the large remainder.

Naturally, he would never be able to make a significant breach on his own. His training in information sciences was minimal, and in any case, he lacked both the processing power and prepared programs to make a serious attempt.

Thankfully, he had the entire CIA on his side. The Central Intelligence Agency had been one of the most stalwart supporters of the Effigy Project, sending much of the 'fat', surplus budget money they were required to return to the treasury at the end of each fiscal year, that they had acquired as a result of the huge sums thrown at them due to the escalating shadow war between nations to the Project.

They also had, as the representative Nathaniel regularly contacted said, '1337 h x0r s|i11z'.

She had actually spelled it out. She was like that.

It only took a few minutes for the data to begin appearing on Nathaniel's displays.

It wasn't good. Four S-Class Nova were converging on West Genetics, the course of the two outermost monsters perhaps one hundred and twenty degrees apart.

While that was bad for the Chevalier defenders, forcing them to split their forces and compounding their lack of experience dealing with multiple threat axes, it could be good for him. If he arrived soon enough, he could take on the Nova one at a time. Even if he had to fight more than one at once, he had the firepower and training to present himself honorably.

Of course, none of that was primarily intended for fighting the Nova, but that wasn't really important.

He continued descending and decelerating as he approached the island housing West Genetics, flying three kilometers above sea level when the school came into sight.

As Nathaniel approached, his displays, and to some extent his own vision, directed by his implants, began focusing on targets of interest. Evacuation vehicles, escape boats, the circling tilt-rotors illuminating the Nova, and a hundred other things.

A moment later, he sucked in a short breath. He had spotted the first Nova.

His first thought was that it was huge. His second thought was that it was _fucking_ huge. His third thought was that when he got back to Wyoming, he needed to sneak his Feedback Protector out of the hanger to have a conversation with the design chief about size decisions. The fourth thing to cross his mind was that maybe he should go and kill something.

Consulting his tactical map for a brief moment, Nathaniel set a heading for the northernmost of the invaders. As his course shifted, the augmentations that he had added to his Archangel for long-distance flight disintegrated into fragments of light. Nathaniel could feel his speed drop and his power consumption climb as he shifted, but Flight Mode was barely suited for heavy combat.

"Stance Shift." He commanded. "Bombardment Mode. De-icers to combat full."

New patterns of light appeared, this time spread out across the surface of the Archangel. They grew into recoil dampeners, precision linear actuators, impact bracing, and a dozen other things. Then he held out his hands.

Massive wireframe patterns more than ten meters long appeared in front of each of them, tracing out an almost opaque net of light.

Then they solidified, becoming twin rifles in his hands.

Each weapon had a barrel aperture of eighty-eighty millimeters, but suggesting that they were simply a longer version of the German weapon of WWII fame with a century of technical improvements was like comparing a bottle rocket to a Trident V ICBM. They were Starlight Rifles, and they fired tiny suns.

As Nathaniel drew a bead on the Nova below, he taped into the PA system and tactical network of the campus below and issued a general threat advisory.

"To all engaged Chevalier forces, inbound supporting fire ETA five seconds, Danger Close. Pandora, stand clear of target; Limiters, go to ground. Also, incoming reinforcements, ETA twenty seconds."

Nathaniel raised both his Starlight Rifles as his displays zoomed in on the Nova still several miles distant, and drew a bead on the alien, preparing to fire his thrusters to compensate for recoil.

He pulled the trigger.

His weapons fired in a quick alternating rhythm, star-shaped flashes of green light flaring at the muzzle with each shot. The shells fell over a wide area at first, but the Nova was a big target, and Nathaniel's grouping improved as he continued to fire, peppering the alien with deadly bursts of green fire.

The projectiles fired from a Starlight Rifle were not simply chemical shells. Each one was a degenerate Plasma Texture, loosely held together in a solid from. That integrity was lost on impact, and the weapon collapsed into a burst of destructive ionized material. The shells Nathaniel was presently firing used a principle similar to the Munroe effect to focus the energy of the detonation in a single direction, amplifying their effect when used against a hardened target.

Three rounds struck the damaged core casing of the Nova in quick succession, shattering it.

As Nathaniel came within ten seconds of impact, his rifles clicked empty. Something occurred to him and, running some quick calculations as he discarded his weapons, he shifted his stance, extending his right leg.

The limb became engulfed in light as Nathaniel hastily reinforced it. It grew steadily thicker, layers growing over it until it was completely unfit for locomotion. Thankfully, Nathaniel had something else in mind.

He aimed for the Nova's face.

Saying that Nathaniel Jefferson Oberon and the XTS-03 Archangel impacted the physiognomy of the invader like a freight train a full tilt would be woefully inaccurate.

While the mass of the Archangel was comparable to that of a small but respectable freight train, it was moving much, _much_ faster. When one considers that kinetic energy is proportional to the _square_ of the velocity... shit is going to get wrecked.

"DYNAMIC ENTRY!" Nathaniel shouted, feeling the impact like a kick in the chest, a bare fraction of the almighty sound of the impact transmitted to him through his audio system.

The leg of the Archangel Tactical Suit was devastated by the impact. Bracing rods and secondary skeletal member snapped like twigs as armored plates crumpled. Material disintegrated like a sandcastle in a hurricane surrounding the striking leg in a whirlwind of light.

However, none of the destroyed material had been present when the battle had begun. The actual core of the machine's leg had been protected by the destruction of its shell of sacrificial material, and it was still in prime condition for combat.

The Nova, on the other hand, was not as fortunate. Its face crumpled as the massive foot connected with it, the impact so severe that the creature was actually knocked down and backwards by the force of the blow.

It seemed to take an eternity for the Nova to fall. Nathaniel flared his thrusters at the last second, arresting his remaining forward momentum and lifting him free of Nova just before it impacted the ground.

Nathaniel landed a few decameters away from the supine Nova, holding out his empty hands.

"Then the Lord said to him, 'Put your sword back into its place; for all those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword'." Nathaniel intoned, a new pair of massive traceries appearing, one extending from each of his hands.

Then he smiled as each of the traceries grew into a massive falchion as the Nova began to rise. "And I'm far from a legion of angels, I suppose you _could_ say I am one. Stance Shift, Brawler Mode active."

Covering most of the distance between him and the recovering monster in a single leaping step, Nathaniel brought his right-hand blade down in a sweeping diagonal cut.

The falchion was not an elegant duelist's foil, nor even the longsword of knightly swordplay. It was much heavier and possessed only a single edge, allowing it to combine the impact force of an axe with the utility of the sword. Its weight made it awkward, and the lack of a reverse edge limited a user's options.

But when it connected, it hit _hard_.

Nathaniel's blade struck the Nova in the shoulder, biting deep into the material of the creature and sending up a fountain of luminous sparks. As an otherworldly, multi-layered scream filled the air, Nathaniel tore his blade free and followed up with a horizontal strike from his other blade. Quickly recovering his left-hand weapon to a guard position, he launched a third attack, a high vertical chop to the Nova's damaged shoulder.

Then he finished with a long front kick, bringing his left leg forward and smashing it into the Nova's abdomen, the follow-through pushing the creature back slightly.

As he returned to a guard stance to evaluate the damage he had done, it struck Nathaniel again just how big the S-Class Nova was. In his Archangel, he stood twenty-two and a half meters tall; the Nova towered over him at somewhere around thirty.

Still, it was better than fighting as a Pandora, standing at less than two meters, and beat the hell out of being a limiter. Facing colossal monsters from the edge of reason bereft of superhuman power or a massive battlesuit had to take incredible bravery. In Nathaniel's mind, they were the true heroes of the Nova Clashes, and he could say with certainty that he utterly lacked such Herculean courage.

The Nova struck at him with its lash whips. A dozen razor-sharp tendrils sprung from each of its shoulders and arced toward him, the pattern of whips to hit him from all directions at once. Nathaniel directed his Shift Field to his armor.

Here is an experiment for the dedicated reader. Go find a whip, like what the Carthaginians or Indians would have used to control their war elephants if you can handle it. Weave some ball bearing and razor blades into it; then find a nice plate of Rolled Homogenous Steel and whip it for half an hour. Make careful note of your results, then continue for ninety more minutes and make another detailed observation.

Congratulations on wasting two hours of your live accomplishing absolutely nothing.

The hyperdense whips of the Nova had slightly more success against the armor of the archangel, in the same way that a machine gun will be more damaging to a mountain than a BB gun.

Nathaniel smiled and swung his falchions in a pair of quick circles, slicing apart several of the Nova's lash whips. Then he stepped forward in a whirlwind of blades.

He attacked for just over four seconds, then punched the Nova back and stepped away. The upper body of the creature was covered in glowing gashes and its skin was pockmarked with craters.

Stepping forward, Nathaniel weather the attacks of the remaining lash whips and launched his right blade in a stabbing motion. It struck the center of the Nova's core, sending a spiderweb of cracks across the surface of the orb.

Swinging his left blade in a lazy circle and severing all the remaining lash whips on that side at the shoulder, Nathaniel withdrew his right weapon and slashed the Nova across the chest as he stepped to the left and began attacking the Nova again, landing several blows before jumping away with jet assistance as the creature turned.

Nathaniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the Nova attacked empty air. Opening his eyes as he tossed his swords aside, Nathaniel charged.

The footfalls of the Archangel sent reverberations through the ground as it ran, evoking a primal, animalistic fear in all human onlookers in a manner completely unlike the bizarre, alien Nova. It was an amplification of the terror echoing through an epoch of genetic memory from the time when tiny mammals faced predators on a similar scale.

Nathaniel connected with a left cross as he impacted the alien, then followed through with a right power kick. The combined force of the two blows was enough to knock the beleaguered Nova supine once more.

Stomping the abdomen of the invader with enough force to leave an imprint of the tread of his sabaton, Nathaniel then set his feet on either side of the long conical protrusion at the base of the Nova. Carefully, he reached down with his left hand and grabbed one of the gashes he had cut earlier and lifted the creature into the air so its ruined face was level with the primary optical sensors of his suit.

This wasn't about military expediency. There were more efficient ways he could have dispatched the Nova. However, it wasn't something as petty as pride, either; it was public relations. He showing the world that he hadn't simply defeated the Nova, he had completely and utterly dominated it.

A wicked grin splitting his face, Nathaniel reached back and punched the core of the Nova. As the creature swung back like a punching back and struggled weakly, Nathaniel set up another punch.

He struck the core a second time, and then a third. The last time, he released the Nova just before impact, sending the creature tumbling. Nathaniel held out his right hand and re-created one of his falchions, circling around so he was standing over the Nova's head.

Then he raised his blade above his head, tip down, grasping it in both hands, and brought it down on the core of the creature. He felt resistance for a moment, then the core yielded and his sword pierced the Nova and embedded itself in the ground.

Then the Nova exploded.

Nathaniel's displays cut out for a moment as sensor arrays were safed. He sat in the dimly lit cockpit for a moment, then the monitors began to return to normal as the death throes of the Nova passed.

[x]

Third-year West Genetics Reservist Mariko Ashia watched from the rooftop of an auxiliary building as the giant of jet black and radiant emerald plunged its sword into the core of the Nova, then vanished from sight as the alien exploded.

The death throes of a Nova were orders of magnitude weaker than their intentional detonations, but still incredibly destructive. It critical for a Pandora to use an Acceleration to escape after destroying the core to avoid being caught in the blast. If this new combatant lacked that ability...

Mariko felt her hands go slack and drop her twin carbines. As they clattered on the ground and disintegrated, a shadow appeared in the billowing flames left behind by the death of the Nova.

The shadow assumed the silhouette of a person walking slowly forward. In a moment that seemed to stretch to infinity, a massive armored leg extended out from the flames, followed by the rest of the giant. It continued walking away from the fire. A few seconds after it was clear, six massive plumes of silvery steam shot from its back. Mariko couldn't hear anything from her vantage point, but she could see the massive, billowing cloud that formed behind the machine as it strode forward.

It took a few more steps, moving clear of the ruined and rubble-strewn ground. Slowly, it dropped to one knee. It was still for a moment, then its surface began to shimmer as a massive, echoing voice rolled out over the still battlefield.

"Look at the immensity of time behind us, and to the time ahead, another boundless expanse. In this infinity, what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?" The voice issuing from the giant intoned. We were not born to watch the world grow dim. Life is not measured in years, but by the deeds of men. All Pandora yet able to fight, to me!"

Everything was quiet for a moment. Mariko took a deep breath, then accelerated forward. She shot across the open field in a low arc, landing some distance in front of the kneeling giant. Now that she was closer, she could see the handholds and braces covering the metal skin of the behemoth. She was pretty sure those hadn't been there before.

"I'll come with you." She declared.

[x]

Nathaniel examined the first Pandora to respond to his call. He could have called up a data file on her, but that would probably be a waste of time. He wasn't making strategic decisions, so character analysis could wait until after the battle.

"Thank you." He said, using his outside speakers. "Now-"

He paused, looking around. Pandora in various states of health were emerging from cover and walking toward his machine. Sometimes it only took one.

He spotted a few Limiters approaching in the crowd and frowned. What he had in mind... probably wouldn't be very good for them.

"Limiters, stand down and tend to your wounded sisters. This next part might get a bit... bumpy, in a limb-severing sense." He said, vaguely amused at his bizarre syntax. "Your fight is over, for now. Rest secure in the knowledge that you have done your part for mankind."

As the battle-ready Pandora survivors jumped up onto the skin of his Archangel and secured themselves to the anchors he had provided, Nathaniel looked over the tactical situation. It wasn't good. All three other Nova were still active, and casualties were climbing.

He waited a moment as the last Pandora braced herself to his machine, then activated his external speaker again.

"Thank you for flying with Archangel Air; we hope you have a pleasant journey. Please ensure your seats are in the upright and locked position and assume the 'handing on for dear life' position." Nathaniel said, then grinned. "Express elevator to hell, going up."


End file.
